It should be easy to register a domain name programmatically in 2025, right?

In 2025, registering a domain programmatically should be easy, right? Turns out, it wasn’t, then it was. This post documents my journey to automate domain registration for my AI Directory Maker—and the roadblocks I hit along the way.

How to Register a Domain with AI:

TL;DR; How To Programmatically Register Domains

This post shares my frustrations with traditional registrars, but if you just want to read ‘how to let my AI register domain names’, skip ahead here.

Why does my AI agent need to register a domain name?

Almost every business needs a website. My first AI business experiment (AI Directory Maker) depends entirely on making websites to generate revenue. Needless to say it’s kind of imperative that the AI agent team can register domain names.

Here’s a sneak peak of what I’m working on now:

… this is the workflow for the Directory Builder Agent, the second of 4 agents which will make up my AI Directory Maker team.

It’s first job is to register a domain.

It was supposed to be easy!

I got there in the end, but registering domains was another core agent capability that I simply couldn’t achieve this challenge without.

My Domain Registration Manual Workflow

I won’t belabour how easy it is to register domain names by hand in 2025. It’s easy. Recently I’ve been using Spaceship.com because they seem the best value for .ai and .com domains.

Who do you use for domains? Let me know in the comments .

The whole process takes perhaps 1 minute. So I figured via API it should take even less…

Attempt 1: Registering a domain with Spaceship.com API

Spaceship.com has an API! Great.

Spaceship.com has a domain registration endpoint, Great! 

Scrap that then.

Attempt 2: Registering a domain with GoDaddy.com API

Now I don’t love GoDaddy, but I have used them before. I figured I could use GD instead of Spaceship if they’d let me register domains via API. I was wrong.

Created an API key. Wired up a rough SDK with cursor, fired off a request and:

“ACCESS_DENIED: Authenticated user is not allowed access”

… strange, my credentials were legit; but Reddit had the answer:

GoDaddy lets you sign up for a key, gives you the docs, and fails to mention it only works if you have 50+ domains on account.

Scrap them too then.

Attempt 3: Registering a domain with Namecheap.com API

TL;DR; Namecheap has a similar rule to GoDaddy – you need to have 20+ domains on account, and I didn’t want to spend hours transferring them, so I scrapped them.

Why can’t these hosts just be transparent about it – they all let you make API keys then say no?

Didn’t even try: Ionos API

I even went to try 1and1 Ionos – but their API straight doesn’t even have a register endpoint.

At this point I was almost going to give up, but I’m glad to say that I didn’t, and I found a domain registrar who actually realises it is 2025: DNSimple.

Finally: My AI Agent Successfully Registered a Domain

If you’re still reading, the point here is: just use DNSimple, (no affiliation). They have a nice modern API and it ‘just works’. 

This was going to be my last try before I just made a browser agent to do the registration via human UI. But within 5 minutes I had my own API set up to register through DNSimple – firing off a call to it registers any domain I want and points the nameservers to mine

For those who might want the code, I’ve shared the API wrapper functions I made here, though to be honest the DNSimple API is pretty straight forward.

Here’s the steps I took to get this working, briefly:

1. Sign up to DNSimple (it’s cheap).
2. Generate OAuth App (Account -> OAuth Applications -> Create)
3. Stick your credentials in a file like dnsimple-oauth.php & create an OAuth token (or have AI do it)
4. Stow your new token and register domains simply via API: dnsimple-helper-functions.php

… no minimum limit, competitive prices, free SSL – I think I’m going to like DNSimple.

Registering Domain Names with AI – Summary

I don’t know about you, but I thought that’d be simpler in 2025. It’s clear these big providers don’t want to let unproven accounts register domains – I guess to avoid credit card fraud. I wish they’d be transparent about it though.

• Big-name registrars all require substantial accounts
• DNSimple’s API ‘just works’, is cheap
• PHP wrapper code in the public challenge repo
• Those okay with the cost could just use Amazons Route53

In the end, I’m glad I found a no-nonsense provider and ticked this off the list for my Directory Builder agent.

Almost finished making this agent; look forward to sharing the full rundown next week!

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Have you found a better way to do this? Let’s discuss in the comments!